Month: September 2004

September 22, 2004 03:56 PM | Permalink |

Eighty-two of America’s largest and most profitable corporations paid no federal income tax in at least one year during the first three years of the George W. Bush administration — a period when federal corporate tax collections fell to their lowest sustained level in six decades. This is one of the many troubling findings of a major new report on corporate tax avoidance by Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). The report covered 275 profitable Fortune 500 corporations, with total U.S. profits of $1.1 trillion over the three-year period.

“The sharp increase in the number of tax-avoiding companies reflects the results of aggressive corporate lobbying and a White House and a Congress eager to do the lobbyists’ bidding,” said Robert S. McIntyre, director of CTJ and co-author of the report with T.D. Coo Nguyen of ITEP.

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September 1, 2004 02:39 PM | Permalink |

Recently, there has been renewed discussion of the possibility of replacing most federal taxes with a national retail sales tax. Such an idea was broached in the 1990s, but political interest waned when it was discovered that it would take a sales-tax rate well in excess of 50 percent to replace existing federal revenues. In August of this year, however, President George W. Bush, speaking in Niceville, Florida, told an “Ask President Bush” campaign forum, “You know, I’m not exactly sure how big the national sales tax is going to have to be, but it’s the kind of interesting idea that we ought to explore seriously.” In South Carolina, Rep. Jim DeMint (R) has centered his campaign for the U.S. Senate on his support for a sales tax. Meanwhile, several dozen members of Congress continue to back specific national sales tax legislation despite the extraordinarily high tax rate and/or large deficit increases it would entail.

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